All Sheroes events are brainstormed and archived online at fuckyeahsheroes.tumblr.com, uniting digital communities with real-time audiences in an ongoing exploration into fan culture and collaborative content creation.
Virtual Season — our culminating presentation of new and past Sheroes on/offline works & performances — is currently gearing into its first international reunion tour. We will be announcing soon tour dates. (If you would like to book a Sheroes event, please contact us.)
Sheroes salonnière reeraw with Dollywood swag thanks to our Sheroes Stan, Brad Horvath. (Who, as you can see, truly represents the Backwoods Barbie IRL). Event GIFs by Lorna Mills.
Earlier this month, we were proud to launch our Sheroes Stan residency, a program that connects aca-fan knowledge and wisdom to the vastly growing motley crew that of international and local artists that are regularly involved with Sheroes each month.
Brad — who was blogging over at Indiewire this week about the 2012 Nashville Film Festival — is someone who is incredibly within six degrees of Dolly. And mind blown! Did something really C000OOOL with his fannish-ness. In 2009, he made a documentary called The Book Lady regarding Dolly’s Imagination Library and her ongoing literacy advocacy work. (He was also just at Dollywood on Monday, but somehow still found the time in the midst of that pixie dust and butterflies to answer our burning fan q’s!)
Click below for the full interview, in which Horvath illuminates on the significance of butterflies, whether Dolly’s disco catalogue is really worth getting into and how she was responsible for Buffy The Vampire Slayer. (And if you’re in Toronto tonight, you can meet Brad at Sheroes #9 and ask him any Q’s we didn’t get answered!)
You’ll remember last week: Brad Horvath - my single remaining “live” connection to Dolly Parton, my last hope of getting her approval and participation on my project - had kind of gone M.I.A. after he offered to hook me up with his link to Dolly.
“Please don’t let this be a dead end”, I kept chanting through the days and weeks of not hearing back from Brad. “Please don’t let this person be a flake.” The fact that I really don’t like to hassle people for favours probably compounded the turnaround time though, because after one or two polite and well-spaced “reminder” emails to Brad, I just waited.
Until I couldn’t wait anymore. One day I picked up the phone and left a timid message on his voice mail. Shazam! - five minutes later I had the email he’d promised me! From then on, everything moved like lightning. By the end of the day, I was actually looking at the name, address and phone number of THE person who could see to it that Dolly Parton would see my project!!
Brad Horvath: “Dolly’s husband? No, not Judy! Carl Dean. They’ve been married since 1966 and he’s only appeared with her in public once! Here are some rare photos (not surprisingly, he’s a tall glass of water!)”
Sheroes was a monthly limited-run art party series that brought together on and offline works that playfully and performatively explore the iconography and cultures of fandom surrounding the "League of Legendary Ladies": Joni Mitchell, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, Madonna, Yoko Ono, Erykah Badu, Etta James, Marianne Faithfull, Dolly Parton, Grace Jones, Dusty Springfield & Nina Simone.
